Page 39 of Seasonal Fears

“I can’t imagine having actual parallels in my care during a coronation and being careless enough to leave them alone,” drawls the Corn Jenny, stealing one of Jack’s fries and ignoring the way she glares at him. He turns it over between his fingers, trying to make the gesture seem casual and cool. He’s an older teen tormenting a young one, and nothing about him is cool. Nothing about this situation is cool.

Especially not Jack, who is getting colder by the second as the situation sinks in. “What are you doing here?”

“Having a burger,” says the Jack Frost.

“Seeing the sights,” says the Corn Jenny.

“Waiting.”

“Shouldn’t have to wait much longer, though. Shouldn’t take too long.”

Jack looks between the two of them, following the conversation like a tennis ball lobbed gently back and forth. “What shouldn’t take long?” she demands.

The other Jack Frost looks at her, seeming to really see her for the first time, and smiles the slow, languid smile of a predator seeing their prey cornered and unable to run away. “Resolving the challenge to the crown, of course,” she says.

Jack vaults over the back of the booth, leaving her food behind, no thoughts in her head except for getting to the motel before something truly terrible can happen. She’s not sure what good she’d do; depending on how far along their Incarnates are, she might be throwing herself into the face of certain doom, changing nothing, only leaving herself dead and broken on the ground. But she’s sure of one thing: that she was summoned by the season to attend on Melanie Cosgrove, and if she fails in that duty, she won’t deserve her place. She can’t have that.

It’s not loyalty. It’s self-interest that makes her run.

A hand grabs her collar, jerking her to a stop through the simple expedient of holding her jacket in place. Jack snarls and thrashes.

Behind her, the Corn Jenny laughs. “Little girl,” he jeers. “I don’t know what the winter was thinking. Is your Incarnate one of your slumber-party buddies? Are you worried about them?”

Jack keeps snarling as she pulls her arms out of her sleeves and shrugs out of the jacket, shedding her denim skin as she runs for the door.

There’s a clatter as both her fellow attendants abandon the booth and chase after her. The man at the register looks up, eyes narrowed at the commotion. “Hey, you kids!” he shouts. “Get out of here! This is not a playground!”

(When the police attempt to review the camera footage of the altercation, they’ll find nothing but the McDonald’s dining room, empty of people, the edges of the film speckled with grainy snowflake static. If not for the discarded tray, there would be no sign that anyone was ever here, certainly not three teenagers running out the door just before the explosion at the motel.)

In a matter of seconds, they’re gone, running out into the chilly February night, not looking back.

First Confrontation

CALENDAR SEASON: FEBRUARY 12TH, 2017: WINTER, UNDER THE WORM MOON.

Melanie is still screaming when the people follow the engine through the window, crashing into the room.

Both are male, one in a tank top despite the time of year, the other in a heavy cable-knit sweater that looks like it was intended more for the Maritimes than the California coast. The taller, the one without sleeves, settles into a fighting stance, hands raised. The one in the sweater has a knife.

It looks very sharp in the motel-room light. Melanie stops screaming. Harry pushes in front of her, and the air is far warmer than it was only a few moments before, sizzling like a summer’s day. Melanie molds herself against his back, biting her lip at the heat radiating from his skin. It should hurt, like grabbing a hardboiled egg that hasn’t had time to cool after being taken off the stove, like trying to handle a chunk of sun-scorched metal. It would hurt, she somehow knows, if she were touching anything else this hot. But it’s Harry, and Harry would never hurt her, and her certainty about that simple fact of the universe is greater than the laws of thermodynamics—which are, after all, just another fact of the universe, and one that might one day be born in the body of a puzzled runaway trying to figure out what their life is becoming—and keeps her safe and shielded.

“They’re parallel,” says the boy in the wool sweater. “They have to be. Look at the way she’s clinging to him. Timid little thing. I almost feel bad about this.”

“Don’t,” says the boy in the tank top. “He’s further along than you are. You don’t want to face him when the season turns.”

“Who the fuck are you, and what are you doing in our room?” demands Harry. He’s waiting for an alarm, for a ruckus from outside, for something to tell him the adults are on their way to take care of whatever the hell is going on. He’s always been sheltered from the world by his parents’ money and his own relative good behavior; he has no frame of reference for what’s happening right now.

But then, how many teens, sheltered or not, would have a frame of reference for this? This is beyond the pale, and even the two boys look like they realize it. It’s the only reason he can see for them to have broken into the room to find him sitting on the bed and Mel wearing nothing but a towel, for God’s sake, with a knife already drawn, and hesitate before finishing their attack.

“Do we really have to kill them?” asks the boy in the sweater. He sounds like he’s on the verge of panic, and Harry realizes he’s about the same age as himself and Melanie, a teenager dragged into a situation he doesn’t fully understand. The one in the tank top is older, mid-twenties at least, and he scowls at his companion.

“No,” he says. “We don’t have to do anything. You have to kill him. After you do that, maybe the timid one renounces her crown. Maybe we let her live when she’s not a threat anymore.”

Harry stops listening when he realizes he’s not the only one they came here intending to slaughter. He wasn’t sure he could hurt someone to protect himself. He’s absolutely certain he can hurt someone for Melanie’s sake. It’s not even a question, not really. He grabs the lamp off the nightstand between the two beds, barely registering how hot it is against his hand, and hurls it as hard as he can at the man in the tank top.

It shatters against his chest, sending shards of ceramic to join the glass already dusting the floor. The man winces, then looks to Harry, eyes narrowing.

“You don’t get to attack me,” he says sourly. “I’m not your target.”